Evan Bouchard

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

12 goals and 31 assists in 81 games — 43 points and a plus-10 at 19:48 a night, the 50th percentile among defencemen — in his first full NHL season, at 22.

52.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,361 minutes, the 74th percentile, and 55.4 per cent of the attempts, the 89th.

Sixteen playoff games for three goals and six assists.

The Finesse Game

7.67 shots per 60 is the 5th-most of the 202 qualified defencemen. Two hundred and five shots in eighty-one games from a second-pair defenceman, at 98.4 mph, the 32nd-hardest of the 192 the tracking covers.

1.54 even-strength points per 60 is the 15th-highest of 202 — elite, and only 16 per cent of his points came on the power play, so it is not a unit’s doing.

The median travels 53 feet and 6 per cent come from the slot. This is a pure point shot taken at enormous volume with a very hard release, and the twelve goals are the product of all three.

2.95 giveaways per 60 is the 7th-most of the 202 qualified defencemen, against 1.38 takeaways at the 84th. He has the puck constantly and he loses it constantly, which is what a 22-year-old carrying that much of the offence produces.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 192, which is light. 2.99 hits per 60 is the 37th percentile among defencemen and 4.19 blocks is the 51st. He does not play a contact game.

22.4 mph is the 71st percentile and 2.1 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 67th, with 8.36 miles per 60 at the 38th. Ordinary at all three, which for a defenceman whose whole value is the shot and the first pass is neither surprising nor a problem.

0.52 penalties taken per 60 is the 36th percentile — twenty-eight minutes in eighty-one games, at nearly twenty a night.

45.0 per cent of his even-strength time was spent in the attacking zone, the 93rd percentile among defencemen — the highest of any Oiler defenceman.

The Intangibles

Tenth overall in 2018, and 102 NHL games at 22 — seven, fourteen and eighty-one.

With Darnell Nurse he took 58.2 per cent of the chances over 1,038 attempts and 49.3 without him. With Connor McDavid 59.9 over 992 and 48.0 without. Both gaps are large and both point the same way, which is the honest frame for a 43-point season: this is a real shot and a real first pass, played beside the best player in the world and the club’s best defenceman.

Duncan Keith, with whom he took 49.4 per cent over 872 attempts, is off the roster. That was the pairing that dragged, and its removal is the most straightforward improvement on the Edmonton blue line.